Overlapping Marathons: What Happens to Female Pace When Men Catch Up?

Abstract

We exploit a highly competitive environment in which elite‐female athletes are exposed to the presence of men, but without being in direct competition with them. Specifically, we use variation in how fast the fastest man runs in the New York City Marathon to identify the potential influence of men on female performance while holding constant female‐runners' marginal incentives to perform. Our results suggest that as the men overtake the female runners, the performance of female runners declines differentially across ability, with the largest declines concentrated among lower ability runners.